This Is Salvaged

Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbour or lover, and the relationships between self and others.

A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbour, who is descending into dementia.

A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators.

A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt.

One sister consumes the ashes of another. And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible's specifications.

In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found?

The characters in This Is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another.